LibGuides: Open Access: Open Data

Creative Commons

Creative Commons
Creative Commons provides free, easy-to-use copyright licenses to make a simple and standardized way to give the public permission to share and use your creative work–on conditions of your choice.

Data Resources

For more information and links to data resources, including repositories for shared data, see our Data Resources LibGuide.

What makes data open?

According to SPARC, Open Data is research data that:

Is freely available on the internet;
Permits any user to download, copy, analyze, re-process, pass to software or use for any other purpose; and
Is without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself.

Increasingly, government agencies are requiring data that they generate or whose generation they fund (through grants, etc.) be open for use by other researchers and available to the public. Check for current data sharing requirements from various US governmental agencies (including granting agencies such as NSF) here. A number of non-governmental granting agencies, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, also require that data underlying research publications be made freely available with a CC-BY license.

Open Data Resources

The Open Data Handbook
Guides, case studies and resources for government & civil society on the "what, why & how" of open data.
Open Data for Development
Open Data Commons
Open Data Commons is the home of a set of legal tools to help you provide and use Open Data.
Toward a Genealogy of Open Data
A research paper tracing the ideas behind open data and its development through various initiatives up to 2014.
Research Data Alliance
An international organization with the goal of developing and adopting infrastructure that promotes data sharing and data-driven research.

Open Government Data

Open Government Data: The Book (2014)
US Project Open Data
An online, public repository started in conjunction with President Obama's Open Data Policy and Executive Order (2013) to encourage public collaboration with government agencies.